As we saw a couple of days ago in “Hail, the Lord’s Anointed” by James Montgomery and Isaac Watt’s “Great God, Whose Universal Sway” metrical re-settings of Psalm 72, these resetting can depart quite a bit from the original Psalm, being greatly influenced by the social milieu surrounding the writer. However, this was not the intent with the original Psalter written by the Calvinist in Geneva, nor the early English translations of the Genevan Psalter.

Some say the primary inspiration (outside of a couple of comments from the apostles about singing the Psalms such as: Matthew 26:30. Mark 14:26, and Acts 16:25) came from Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, general just known as Erasmus. He was a Dutch Catholic priest and scholar contemporaneous with Luther and Calvin. He worked to reform the Roman church from within, attempting to stop the abuses by clergy. He was a world renowned scholar of Greek and Latin and had help prepare new editions of the New Testament in those languages. In the preface to his Greek New Testament he wrote: “I would have the weakest woman read the Gospels and the Epistles of St Paul. I would have those words translated into all languages, so that not only Scots and Irishmen, but Turks and Saracens might read them. I long for the ploughboy to sing them to himself as he follows the plow, the weaver to hum them to the tune of his shuttle, the traveler to beguile with them the dullness of his journey.”

Prior to the Reformation, direct access to the Scriptures was limited to only those with a classical education in Greek and Latin and singing during worship was limited to professional musicians and singers.

The use of a Psalter was primarily part of the Reformed tradition. Starting in Geneva with a French translation. Dutch and English translations soon followed along with other translations of languages native to the British Isles. The 1912 Palster, which this hymn ultimately came from, was untaken by The United Presbyterian Church along with several other Presbyterian denominations and Reformed denominations, during the early part of the 20th century. (While the denomination may bear the name associated with the main line denomination which eventually became the PCUSA, the denomination at this time was much more conservative and orthodox in its theology (by a very large margin) than the later iterations of the UPC became.)

The singing of the Psalms has now become a rare activity found almost exclusively in the Reformed churches. I cannot imagine a more biblical source for texts for hymns than the Psalms. The psalms, taken in their entirety, cover every aspect of the human experience and our relationship to God.